Zukerman on Atheism - A Rebuttal to Psalm 14

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by sk8eycat on April 23, 2012 at 1:31am

I have read that Secular Student Alliance is one of the fastest-growing on-campus organizations in the US.  I'm very proud of all of them.

I never had a chance to go to college, I joined an ice show instead...learned a LOT, very rapidly!  Tee-hee!  (I did see a few ...maybe 4 or 5 out of 36...of the "kids" cross themselves backstage just before the opening number, but it never semed to make a difference one way or another.)

Permalink Reply by David Layton on April 22, 2012 at 9:55pm

Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman notes that many of the Psalms were "explicitly prayers that God will inflict horrible judgments upon the author's enemies" (God's Problem, p. 115). That probably includes this one. The editors of the Oxford Study Edition of the Bible say that the "fool" is a person who decides to act as if there is no God, i.e. to sin, and is not an atheist. One should note that the specific passage condemns all men as wicked and vile, that they all act as if there is no God. The God here is clearly Yahweh, the god of retributive punishment, and not the Christian god. The writer is invoking retribution against the enemies of his tribal god. Sadly, all this is lost on the simple-minded who pluck such quotations and use them willy-nilly.

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• Next ›
• Page